The present invention relates to software application program development tools and environments including integrated development environments (IDEs), rapid application development (RAD) systems, and graphical user interface (GUI) tools that enable the creation and editing of either static or dynamic computer applications. In particular, the present invention relates to the creation and editing of object process graphs, which are described subsequently herein.
The present application is related to two copending applications: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/908,654 entitled “Object Process Graph System” filed on May 20, 2005; and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/908,653 entitled “Object Process Graph Application Controller-Viewer” filed on May 20, 2005. Both applications are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.
Since the development of assembly language in the 1950's the computer industry has witnessed a series of incremental advances in software development. These advances have allowed software to be developed faster, with less manual labor, and made possible the creation of more complex software systems and improved the reliability of software systems in general. These advances include the development of 3rd generation programming languages like COBOL and Fortran; fourth generation programming languages like FOCUS; object oriented programming languages like Smalltalk, C++ and Java; CASE tools like Rational Rose; relational database systems like Oracle and DB2 and object oriented database systems like GemStone and Versant. However, despite these advances the development of a large systems is still an expensive, high-risk venture that requires many highly-skilled programmers and there is always considerable uncertainty regarding the quality and applicability of the final system.
Fifth generation programming languages and their associated development environments, such as, LabVIEW and MATLAB Simulink are designed to elevate the development productivity achieved by using the fourth generation languages to the next level. They allow non-programmers to use computing power in terms that closely resemble their specific problem domains. Features of the fifth generation language environments typically include an integrated persistent data management system, a query language, report generators and a user interface definition facility, and can be complemented by a graphics generator, decision support function, financial modeling, spreadsheet capability, statistical analysis functions and parameterized business and domain models. However, the most widespread embodiments of the fifth generation language tools have targeted highly specialized and relatively narrow domains, such as instrument data acquisition (LabVIEW), signal processing, process control, mechanical modeling, microarray data handling, communication system design, etc.